As a quantifying method (counting method) for microbes contained in a specimen material, an ATP (adenosine triphosphate) method is conventionally known that quantifies ATP extracted from microbes to indirectly count the microbes.
Patent Literature 1 describes, in a method of detecting microbial count by ATP-bioluminescence method using a filtration membrane, completely removing noise luminescence points other than microbes to reliably determine presence or absence of one microbe.
This ATP method includes bringing an ATP extractive reagent into contact with trapped microbes to extract ATP inherent in the microbes and counting the microbes based on luminescence intensity obtained by reaction of a luminescent reagent to the ATP. This ATP method makes it possible to dramatically reduce the time required from the trapping of microbes until the counting thereof to one hour or about a few hours, while, for example, a culture method of counting microbes based on the number of colonies of microbes cultivated on a plate takes a few days.
Moreover, Patent Literature 2 describes a microbe quantifying method by which quantitative analysis of a large quantity of a fluid specimen can be performed rapidly and simply. This microbe quantifying method includes filtering the fluid specimen containing microbes with a filter and extracting ATP of the microbes allowed to remain on the filter.